


Heartbeat Morality

by Ezzy



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 23:18:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7989880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezzy/pseuds/Ezzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you were to ask Dick about his childhood, he would remember the great love and affection showered on him by his parents, hugs and kisses to supporting hands on the trapeze. He would remember it all fondly, and think nothing of how much contact it had involved. </p><p>Or, Dick Grayson is Not Entirely Human. Bruce Wayne would still do anything to keep him alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartbeat Morality

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Heartbeat Morality](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11839638) by [tunnenbery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunnenbery/pseuds/tunnenbery)



If you were to ask Dick about his childhood, he would remember the great love and affection showered on him by his parents, hugs and kisses to supporting hands on the trapeze. He would remember it all fondly, and think nothing of how much contact it had involved. 

Dick would never say he was unloved at Wayne manor; he was pretty sure the gentle tone Alfred used, even when scolding him, and the tender way Bruce would sometimes tuck him into bed after patrol counted as love. It was a less physical love as his parents, but it was just as fierce.

Intellectually he’d always known that, but it hadn’t stopped him trying to hug Alfred, or wanting to be picked up by Bruce. It hadn’t stopped the loneliness creeping in or the despair from slowly swallowing him up. 

He’d known it even as he stopped eating. At first Alfred tried coaxing mouthfuls into him, then insisting, and finally almost pleading. He’d known it even as he finally began to worry about why he couldn’t eat. 

He’d known it even as he collapsed on the stairs, only vaguely aware of Bruce’s panicked shout, or Alfred flinging his tray of tea aside to rush to him. 

Dick wouldn’t remember his time at the hospital; not the clinical prodding and poking, the scans and tests. The faintly despairing way the doctors confessed to a frantic Bruce Wayne that the best medical minds in the country could not work out what was wrong with his ward, even as slowly faded away. 

When the doctors told Bruce he probably wouldn’t make it through the night, the Dark Knight had sat for hours with his head in his hands, before ordering everyone to leave the room. Then he had delicately picked up his baby bird, and held him through the night. 

It was declared nothing less than a miracle when he was not only still alive the next morning, but managed to wake up. Bruce didn’t let go of him through the initial confusion, and continued to keep the doctors at bay when their examinations made Dick curl up closer. 

During the recovery period he spent his days and most of his nights either by Dick’s side, or letting Dick cuddle up to him on the bed as he caught up with work. When he was finally given a clean bill of health, Bruce carried him to the car, shielding him from the cameras and tucking him into his own bed, just in case. 

After a while, when Robin’s health remained stable he began distancing himself a bit. Dick could admit that it hurt, but he’d never admit that hurt was physical. That wasn’t exactly normal. And besides, after patrol he was still allowed to curl up on Batman’s lap and tuck his head into the curve of the older man’s neck as he wrote up reports. They never talked about it, but it was enough. 

Until it wasn’t. Around 14 puberty started to really kick in, and as his limbs began to lengthen, his muscles firm and his face lost its roundness, Bruce began to get irritated and insist Dick didn’t fit in his lap anymore, and to stop behaving like a child. Dick thought he fit better every day. 

When he first started losing his footing and misjudging leaps, Batman insisted it was just normal teenage awkwardness, and with a bit of extra training he’d be fine. Dick agreed, he’d noticed how everyone in his class had taken on a gangly appearance, as if they were aliens in their own bodies. No one mentioned how there was nothing gangly or awkward about teenage Dick, or how strangely smooth his transition into adulthood was going. It was like everyday he rolled out of bed slightly more beautiful. 

No one mentioned it, but everyone noticed it. The first time Alfred saw a girl giving Dick her number he reported in immediately to Bruce. Dick knows this, because it was too big of a coincidence that Bruce gave him the stiffest, most awkward talk they’ve ever had the same night. It upset Dick, and not because of the usual teenage embarrassment. 

He vaguely remembers his parents making love – their trailer was small after all – and they had never been ashamed or embarrassed about it. It was another, deeper sign of care and affection they’d told him when he asked, before covering him in kisses and cuddles, with promises to go into more detail when he was older. It hurt that not only weren’t they here to do so, but Bruce in their stead made it such a terrible, traumatic thing to discuss. 

On top of that he didn’t get his post-patrol snuggle, apparently being deemed ‘too old’. He cried that night, and a small part of him couldn’t help but feel it was unbearably cruel of Bruce to ration his affection like that, even knowing Bruce meant no such thing by it. He reclaimed it the next night, when he’d been injured not pulling away from Killer Croc in time to escape his claws. He never told Bruce it wasn’t because he couldn’t, but a strange reluctance to get away that had overtaken him. 

He started engaging in more skin to skin contact after that; patting team mates on the back, touching people’s arms when he was talking to them. Even flirting with girls because he learnt he could put his arm round their shoulders or hold their hand if he did. However he found didn’t try to go any further, even when they indicated their willingness (and everyone indicated their willingness, there was just something about Dick Grayson). He supposed it was being Robin, he’d been trained not to let anyone he didn’t trust too close, and the only people he truly trusted were Bruce and Alfred. 

Maybe that was why one day during their post-mission report/cuddle, Dick had slid a hand under the cowl to rest on Bruce’s cheek as he pressed their lips together. He trusted Bruce, Bruce loved him and in those first few moments everything had been perfect. What happened after was so distressing and so embarrassing Dick almost wished he could die. After a few days of Bruce avoiding him and Alfred being distant he almost got that wish. 

He awoke to frantic kisses and the old familiar feeling of being cradled and would have smiled if he’d had the strength. Still, he could tell Batman had registered his consciousness as he heard his sigh as Bruce collapsed in on himself. 

“It’s okay,” he heard Bruce whisper, even as he tried to open his eyes, “it’s going to be okay. We’re going to find someone who can tell us what’s wrong, a real expert this time. We can fix this.”

Bruce leans in and kisses him properly, all tongue and heat and mouths joining, Dick feels fixed. 

Bruce’s ‘expert’, when he finally digs him up and drags him back to Gotham, is creepy. He supposes he shouldn’t be that surprised that this is true for someone with the last name Blood, but it doesn’t stop him trying to huddle in to Bruce when the Jason guy starts circling him and sniffing him. 

“I see what you meant Bruce, a delicate situation. His kind normally keep to themselves partly due to it.”

Dick does not appreciate being called a situation. or the reference to ‘his kind’. He’d been taught all his life not to put up with that kind of crap since he’d first heard the word gypsy. 

“What can I do to fix it?”

Bruce is ever blunt and to the point, but a protective arm wraps around Dick as he says it.

“Fix? There’s nothing to fix, it’s a part of who he is. The only thing to ‘do’ is keep doing what you already are. It shouldn’t be too arduous a task.”

Blood looks Dick up and down with a sneer before turning to leave. Bruce doesn’t stop him, just pulls his boy closer to him, and as they both watch his departure, Dick doesn’t see Bruce’s expression, torn between guilt and rage. 

Dick doesnt connect that conversation to Bruce’s decision to take him to bed on his 16th birthday. They’ve been intimate before, their closeness growing with Dick’s desire for contact. 

It’s amazing, truly incredible, and he can’t believe the horror stories he’s heard or warnings about how awkward and terrible the first time always is. It feels so natural; the desperate kisses and licks all over each other’s bodies, the tangle of limbs and the clinging press of bodies against one another. When they join, it feels so perfect Dick finally thinks he understood what his parents meant all those years ago. It’s like his body opens for Bruce, like he finally understands truth and beauty and pleasure. Bruce doesn’t sound like he disagrees. 

They do it three times that night; frantically, like they can’t get enough of each other’s flesh; then roughly, Dick screaming in ecstacy and shaking with the force of it; and finally passionately, slowly revelling in their closeness and unwilling to let it end. 

The next day Dick has never felt so alive, filled with energy and practically glowing. People turn to look at him on the street and he can only laugh at their admiration. On patrol he’s in better form than ever. Charming, effusive and full of grace. No one can take their eyes off him, not even Batman. 

It continues for two years, Batman and Robin, Dick and Bruce; partners, lovers and everything else in between. Dick becoming more and more impossibly attractive as he grows, until finally when he’s 18 and they legally can the papers dub him ‘Sex on Legs’. He only laughs, but Bruce is less amused, becoming more withdrawn and angry. The more Dick coaxes, the higher the walls get, and Dick just doesn’t know why. 

Snooping is bad. Snoopers are punished, Alfred had said to him before he knew about Batman. The hidden file on the Batcomputer certainly seems to be punishment.

He’s almost pleased when Bruce walks in, freezing at the sight in front of him, at least he can stop reading now. 

_Incubus._

“It’s only a part of you Dick,” Bruce insists, once it seems the yelling and screaming and tears might finally be at an end, “only a part, we can fix it.”

Dick looks at the man he has considered a mentor and a lover, who he thought adored him because he of who he was not what. He doesn’t know who he’s more disgusted at, Bruce, or himself for putting Bruce in the position of choosing between sex with his ward or death. 

But Bruce seems relieved he’s calmed down, so he lets the man wrap his arms around him and stroke his hair, murmuring about dinner, and patrol, and his plans to enrol Dick at Gotham U (strong school, good selection of courses – whatever Dick wants – and easily commutable from home on his bike).

He doesn’t voice his thoughts, not stop controlling me, or why do I always let you? Especially not do you love me? These are new thoughts, and as such need proper examining before being aired. There has been enough hurt between them tonight. 

He even lets Bruce take him to bed and fuck him desperately and savagely into the mattress, even as he tries not to dwell on the fact it was always making love before, or that he still luxuriates in it. 

Finally, when Bruce has worn himself into sleep, he slips out of their bed, grabs his clothes and leaves a note on his pillow. He doesn’t take anything except what he’s wearing and what cash is in his wallet as he exits the Manor in the most final way he ever has before.

The next morning Bruce wakes up to a cold bed and only a slip of paper for company.

_If it’s part of who I am then why does it need to be fixed?_

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a tumblr fic exchange back in 2012 under the title 'For the Sound of Your Heartbeat''and left to languish because of my great organisational skills. Stilll can’t believe I wrote i, but apparently this is what happens when my mind mixes thoughts about Dick’s desperate need for affection and skin contact, and Bruce’s desperate need to keep his favourite alive with There Must Be A Supernatural Explanation.


End file.
